Legal Blogging and Marketing Archives

Q&A with Derek Ryan on Business Development and Litigation Graphics

March 25, 2024 by Morgan Smith Leave a Comment

If you’re a partner at a small firm, you know that every new position that’s created and filled matters exponentially more than a single hiring at a big firm. Payroll will spike with each new addition, and everyone will work closely together. It’s therefore imperative to hire someone who can wear different hats, who’s an enthusiastic “team player” and who’s genuinely likable.

Here at our three-year-old firm, Cogent Legal, my partner Mike Kelleher and I recently created a key position. We knew we had to find the right person with that flexible skill set, enthusiasm and great personality. We found him and are excited to introduce him: Derek Ryan, Cogent’s new Director of Business Development.

Derek is truly an interesting and likable guy whose background as the longtime GM at JAMS makes him well suited to understand attorneys’ needs and to deliver services not just for trial but also for ADR—an area that has yet to embrace the potential of graphics and technology for case presentation.

We thought you’d like to meet Derek because he has some great ideas for attorneys and an unusual background. So, we hope you’ll read and enjoy these 5 Questions for Derek Ryan: [Read more...]

A Visual Story About Litigation Technology

March 15, 2024 by Michael Kelleher Leave a Comment

I will be presenting some webinars soon about litigation technology (click here for info and to register), and in those webinars, I want to tell the story of litigation technology in a visual way. I hope to avoid the standard e-discovery funnel or boxes with arrows approach (see here if you don’t know what I mean). Thus, I began to play with Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop to create a GIF that would tell a story. For a diversion on the eve of the weekend, I share it below—I hope you enjoy it and have a great weekend.
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Are You Ready to Practice Law Like It’s 2014?

January 14, 2024 by Morgan Smith Leave a Comment

Change is always exciting, and we have an announcement to make as we transition to 2014. The big news for the start of the year is the formation of Cogent Legal, LLC as a partnership between myself and Michael Kelleher. Mike has been consulting for Cogent Legal for the past year and blogs regularly here. This partnership makes Mike a full manager of the company, but continues with the same business focus we have had in the past of providing outstanding legal graphics for litigation.

I’m so happy to have a partner, who like myself is a former practicing litigator with a great deal of trial experience. Mike’s speciality in business litigation—he’s a former partner and head of IP practice at Folger Levin & Kahn—complements my background in class action and PI cases. (Read our press release here.)

We both became lawyers in the 1990s and have witnessed tremendous change in the practice of law over these two decades. Looking back as well as looking ahead, we felt inspired to make this short animation to show the change from 1994 to 2014, and to illustrate Cogent Legal’s role in helping attorneys keep pace with change and win cases by leveraging graphics and tech. We hope you’ll watch it and let us know what you think.

We plan to continue writing about new developments in legal technology and litigation strategy, and sharing our practical tips through this blog. We also are getting ready to host webinars on our site to provide high-quality MCLEs on a regular basis. We’ll have an announcement here on the blog about that soon, so if you haven’t already, we hope you’ll subscribe to this blog by clicking here for updates.

2013 was a great year, with a highlight being voted the 2013 Best Presentation Provider by the Recorder. In 2014 we hope to continue to live up to that honor. From us here at Cogent Legal, we wish you all a great 2014.

6 Helpful “How To” Lessons on Legal Tech and Litigation Graphics

December 26, 2023 by Morgan Smith 1 Comment

Yesterday for Christmas, I opened a box that contained my very own Google Glass, and I know I’ll spend a good chunk of time during this vacation week teaching myself how to use the device. Once I get a feel for how Glass works and how attorneys might harness its power for litigation, you can bet I’ll share what I learned here on this blog.

I truly enjoy writing “how to” posts to pass along tips that can improve case presentations and make a litigator’s life easier. These posts often describe how to troubleshoot or avoid tech snafus that can crop up before or during trial. Or, they describe how to use technology and develop visual aids to make a more powerful case presentation.

As discussed earlier (in How Lawyers Can and Must Learn Legal Tech and Social Media), attorneys who don’t learn to use technology effectively will find themselves at a competitive disadvantage. Here are six of my favorite “how to” posts from the past year that aim to help litigators use graphics and technology to build and present the best case possible for their clients: [Read more...]

How Lawyers Can and Must Learn Legal Tech and Social Media

December 4, 2023 by Morgan Smith 4 Comments

“Luddite Lawyers Are Ethical Violations Waiting to Happen.” That’s the alarming headline on a great post earlier this week in Lawyerist.com by attorney Megan Zavieh, who specializes in defending attorneys under investigation by the California State Bar. She talks about how lawyers’ relationship to technology—and their obligation to understand it—have fundamentally changed in two decades. “Technology is an unavoidable part of practicing law. The ethics rulemakers have taken note of this evolution, and the rules have grown to require technological competence,” she writes.

The ABA and court rulings have raised the bar on what attorneys have a duty to know and to do in the areas of computer technology and online activity. In this post, I’ll summarize some key take-aways from Ms. Zavieh’s post (I recommend you also read the full post here) and share advice on how to stay on top of ever-changing legal tech—not only to fulfill your duty to your clients, but also to improve your practice. [Read more...]

How Tech and Outsourcing Are Altering the Legal Profession

September 27, 2023 by Morgan Smith 2 Comments

A week ago, I was invited to Portland, Oregon, to present at the Federal District of Oregon Conference on “Innovations in Law: Science and Technology.” The conference explored the intersection of law and technology from many different angles. It utilized the Ignite method of presentation that involves each participant having six minutes and 20 slides, which are set on an automatic pace. The idea of the format is to “ignite” the audience on a subject. This meant that participants had to develop a very short presentation on their use of technology in the law, and time it well to a series of slides.

One overarching theme that came through strongly was that people are looking for better ways to interact with lawyers and technology, and one of the most interesting topics was the massive shift in our economy away from the law firm model, which apparently peaked in revenue in approximately 2004. While I was aware of this generally, I was not aware in detail of the explosive growth of non-traditional law and law support services, often centered around technology. In essence, a great deal of traditional law firm work is now being done by outside contractors, which is profoundly altering the legal profession. [Read more...]

Going From “Start Up” to “Best Of”

August 30, 2023 by Morgan Smith Leave a Comment

I have some great news to announce that makes me very proud: Cogent Legal was voted “the best presentation provider” in Northern California for 2013 in The Recorder’s annual poll of law firms and legal services. It’s truly an honor to receive recognition like this when it feels like we’re just getting out of start-up mode. The award made me think about how Cogent has grown since its start in January 2011, which is a bit like watching a child grow into an interesting and independent person. (I used to think the idea that a corporation is a person under the eyes of the law was sort of silly, but when you see your own corporation grow, it’s not so silly.)

It only seems like a few months ago, not two-and-a-half years, that I was moving into our office space after spending several months at home developing my idea for a litigation graphics firm. Those first months were pretty lonely and anxiety-producing; I had left my previous law firm partnership, and all the people I cared about there, to try something completely different and potentially a lot less lucrative. What in the world was I thinking? But as more people came on board to work at the firm and Cogent’s client list grew, the new business took on a life of its own and finally started to seem more smart than crazy.

Starting a business in any field is not easy, and you definitely start with a feeling of “playing business” for quite a while as you’re extremely busy planning and taking the first steps of your business, but not spending much time on real paying work. [Read more...]

My Log of Blogs: Recommendations for the ABA Top Blawg List

July 24, 2023 by Morgan Smith 4 Comments

For the seventh year, the ABA Journal is compiling a list of the Top 100 Law Blogs, which they call “Blawgs.” Given the glut—probably thousands—of law-related blogs online, landing a spot in this Top 100 is quite an honor, and the resulting list is a great guide (see the 2012 list here). How does the ABA Journal pick these 100 blawgs to highlight? It begins with nominations by readers like you. You can nominate one or more favorite law blogs through this link before the Aug. 9 deadline.

To guard against self-promotion, the ABA Journal discourages self-nominations or nominations from PR types. Since I can’t and wouldn’t nominate this blog, which blogs would I recommend? They are listed below; those with an asterisk indicate the blog made it on the 2012 Top 100 list. Following my list are some IP-oriented recommendations from my colleague here at Cogent, attorney Michael Kelleher. [Read more...]

Blogging and Social Media for the Legal Profession: Advice on What Works and Why

June 18, 2024 by Morgan Smith 6 Comments

At the recent American Society of Trial Consultants convention in New Orleans, I was part of a wide-ranging panel discussion on social media and marketing that considered the benefits and effects of blogging and other social media. Since I’ve been developing this blog and using social media for professional networking to grow my startup firm, this topic genuinely interests me. I started blogging and became active on Twitter and LinkedIn in early 2011 with little to no training, figuring it out as I went along, and I’m always eager to learn from others and share what I know. With that in mind, here are some of the key points made at the presentation that may be useful to attorneys, trial consultants and legal marketers. [Read more...]

Some Pitfalls of Legal Blogging and 5 Favorite Law Blogs

March 26, 2024 by Morgan Smith 7 Comments

I admit, I’m not the most consistent blogger. I try to publish a post at a minimum weekly, but work intervenes and makes blogging with regularity a challenge. I go for quality over quantity in blogging and respect the fact that I probably have 30 seconds or less to grab and hold the reader’s attention. (Hang in there, this turns practical, I promise!)

Are you an attorney who blogs—or have you been advised to start a blog? If so, I recommend a recent post on Lawyerist.com by Sam Glover called “What to Blog About (or: How to Keep Blogging),” which gives smart advice on how to avoid adding to the abundance of what he calls “crappy, dead law blogs” with “second-rate posts nobody wanted to read, anyway.”

That post got me thinking not only about my own blog, but about those blogs in the legal field I admire for sharing useful information in an authentic voice. I’d like to take this post to highlight a few that I regularly read. [Read more...]